The Project Pad

Out with the new...



...and in with the new'er



Im still awaiting some contact from the fabricator but I felt I needed to so something productive on the car. I managed to swap the springs by taking loose the ball joint and the tie rod and rocking the whole assembly out of the fender well. Mad props to the CompBrake top mounts! Man these things make servicing the rear struts amazingly easy. I didn't have to pull the rear seat out or mess with the package shelf. Just undo the spanner nut on top and lower the whole thing out the bottom.

I had mentioned the squeaking a while ago and found that it was the coil spring rubbing against the retaining collar. I ended up swapping out the Suspension Specialties springs with some from 2Bennett. The 2Bennett's are wound a little chubbier in the mid section so there is no more contact. Im expecting these to be very quiet now - combined with the teflon rings which the springs rest on.

I wanted to go with a 10" - 375 lb in the rear but the closest they had to my spec was a 9" - 380 lb. This is down from a 8" - 400 lb in the first photo.

i so far like my CompBrake stuff, especially the convenience of it. but dont get any for anyone else LOL.

and did John (Don Iroz, the family founder) mean two of a single Seans' UrQ's, or one each of two different Seans' UrQ's??

i thought Sean (father of the blue and red pills, respectively) had only the one blue pill UrQ and the red CQ pill.... but then again, what do i know. he could be a car hoarder like myself LOL...

There is another Sean in Las Vegas that owns the other 83 Mars Red Urq in town. Aaron, you saw my Urq last week and even commented that it looked to be a pretty clean example. The other Sean's car makes mine look pretty shabby. He has a nice mostly stock example.

A few post's up John was referring to my blue car as well as Sean's (foxbat) red car. All I really need is a couple tie rods in the rear and I can drop that car down and drive it to the track. Sean has made great strides getting his car ready after some really strange consequences that kept him from driving it at our event last October. The trip to Spring Mountain should be his car's maiden voyage, Im pretty sure he will be there to hang out with all of us but Im not sure if he'll be doing any track time.

Hank's car will magically reappear from the ashes like it does just before every event, we should nickname Hanks car the Phoenix. - c'mon Hank git'er done!

Dick's 2.7TT UrQ is in dire need of an intercooler solution and he is discouraged enough that he is leaving it at home and driving his S6 on the track.

If all the planets were to align there is the possibility that we could have had 5 UrQ's but as it looks we'll probably end up with 3-4, which ain't half bad anyway.

Aaron, are / were you in Vegas again?

Sean, yeah i was there briefly last week. fly in weds work thurs fly out fri.

and Johns car is to me really nice condition, so i can imagine the other Seans car....

Don't you mean Renee's car? Mine is still in pretty rough shape and missing more and more parts all the time. :wink:

I took a half-day off work today and installed two borrowed rear tie rods. I did a very rude alignment and put a few miles on the car. I really think the original tie rods being tweaked contributed greatly to this cars weird handling. I think the bend affected bump steer with the geometry change. Even with an eyeball alignment the car felt wayyy better.

The 2B springs are a winner! Neither the fronts of the rears make a peep. I have to reset my rear ride height since Im running 9" instead of 8" now.

Next problem is that my plates expired due to emissions on the 10th while I was out of town last week. Arriving home to the car up in the air didn't leave me too any options, it don't look goo either - there are no more 'favors' to be had in this town. Going to have to get the Vbands welded on the CAT and come up with something...

I think I found a ride for the 16x8s for that will come in on Friday afternoon.

Good Morning.



NOT!!

Im SO freakin tired of not having a tach after the IIc upgrade I decided to give it one last effort before the track event. Im getting to he point that I don't think the issue is at the cluster. I have traced schematics and am leaning towards some sort of relationship between the low oil pressure warning and the tach. I know somehow these 'safety' systems are related but Im not sure where. My oil warning light has been on since the removal of the MAC14 harness, and thats when I lost my tach. If I remove the bulb for the oil light - I lose my fuel pump.

I either need to isolate the tach form the circuit completely or I need to trick the system into thinking there is oil pressure. If it weren't for a pristine CARFAX on this car I'd tear the whole lot of it out and do completely modern stand-alone cluster.

Sean interesting info about the springs causing squeaks. My cars sounds like a 1979 Impala when I go over speed bumps - "reet rrrr reeet rrrr". Damn it is soooo annoying. I wonder if that is my problem. I'm running Eibachs. Were there any visible signs?

Brandon, is your car on coilovers? Thinking back I never got a ride in your car *hint hint* When we went to the museum in October Im sure you noticed how horrid mine sounded. If you are running coil overs check the inner portion of the spring where it is closest to the silver metal cap that retains the strut within the housing. If the cap or the spring show signs of interference that is very likely the cause of the noise.

If you are on a factory dimensioned spring and you have some squeaking - provided its spring-squeak, it could be from where the springs rest on the perch. In my pics above you can see a 1/16" pad that I cut out of white UHMW plastic (~teflon) that isolates the springs from the perch to allow the spring to wind up and unwind without metal to metal contact.

I would jack the car up, vacuum out any debris that has settled in the lower perch, give it a dose of white lithium grease and then take the car for a drive over your favorite speed bump and see if that had any affect on the noise.